In the two hours after Charlie Kirk was shot, almost nothing was certain. Some clung to reports of hope. Others, having watched the footage, insisted there was none.
But one thing was evident from the start: factions on the Right were already trying to turn the death of one of America’s most prominent activists into a weapon — not against progressivism, but against Israel.
On social media, conspiracies quickly flooded comment sections within hours of the assassination, pointing fingers at Israel. Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson — both of whom have spent the past year training much of their fire on Israel — chose to make Charlie’s death part of that campaign.
Though each had once called him a dear friend, they quickly moved to recast his legacy as if he had been on their side of the issue.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration and many commentators on the Right turned their attention to the causes of the killing. The assassin was a radical leftist, shaped in the ideological climate of American universities where violent rhetoric against conservatives had become normal.
Trump adviser Stephen Miller vowed to use political power to rein in the organizations that had nurtured such radicalism. Vice President JD Vance declared there could be no peace with people like this — or with the hundreds of Americans who openly celebrated the killing.
Ben Shapiro promised to continue his campus tours, casting Charlie’s mission as more urgent than ever. Matt Walsh agreed the fight must remain focused on confronting left-wing violence.
Not so with Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson. They’re using this tragedy to talk about Israel.
Two days after Charlie’s death, Carlson was already reshaping Charlie’s record. He highlighted Charlie’s visit to the White House during the debate over striking Iran — portraying him as a skeptic, though in fact Charlie had been one of the few to support Trump’s decision without hesitation.
Carlson insisted that Charlie despised Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, that he was “tormented” by and under “enormous pressure” from his pro-Israel donors.
His revisionism was, in part, a rebuttal to Netanyahu, who had publicly mourned Charlie and thanked him for his support of Israel. But it was also an effort to persuade Americans to doubt what they had seen for years — that the Charlie Kirk who championed Israel so forcefully was, in fact, secretly a victim of its pressure.
Candace Owens, invoking her past friendship with Charlie to claim authority, moved quickly. Within hours of his death, she wrote that he had “opposed war with Iran and was fighting with his donors over Israel.”
From there, she pressed a broader narrative: that wealthy backers were manipulating him, and that an influencer retreat in the Hamptons — hosted by billionaire Bill Ackman and Charlie himself — had been little more than a covert intervention to bully him into maintaining a pro-Israel stance.
Charlie’s inner circle, including his longtime producer Andrew Kolvet, flatly rejected Candace’s account. The Hamptons gathering, they explained, had been organized as a focus group — a chance for Charlie to gauge the mood of the Right and to hear where it needed to improve. Influencers who attended likewise dismissed her version, noting that Israel was scarcely discussed at all.
In truth, Charlie had already distanced himself from Candace as her commentary grew increasingly conspiratorial and openly antisemitic. She no longer appeared alongside him or took part in Turning Point’s conferences. When asked directly about Owens and antisemitism, he did not equivocate: those who blamed Jews for their problems, he said, were “demonic.”
The rhetoric from Carlson, Owens, and the fringe Right — arguing over what Charlie truly believed about Israel and who had pressured him in his final days — soon drew pushback. JD Vance urged that this was not the moment for such debates.
Charlie’s pastor and closest friend, Rob McCoy, released a statement of his own, pleading with the agitators to stop fighting each other.
There is little ambiguity about what Charlie Kirk actually believed. Throughout his career, he was a steadfast supporter of Israel. In the past year alone, more than half the questions he fielded at events concerned the country, and he consistently pushed back against its critics.
Yet he was not a blind spokesman. In an interview with Megyn Kelly, he admitted his frustration at being attacked for criticizing Israel’s government — criticisms, he noted, no different from those voiced by Israelis themselves — while paying a far steeper price for doing so.
He also recognized that conservatives were losing ground on the issue. To better understand why, he convened focus groups with young Americans, probing how they viewed Israel and how he might shape a more effective conversation.
He was propelled by a commitment to truth — challenging the flood of media narratives against Israel at a time when even many conservative outlets looked away — and by his evangelical faith. On this issue, there was no ambiguity: Charlie stood firmly within the traditional conservative consensus, far closer to it than to the anti-Israel worldview now advanced by Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens.
Charlie occupied a singular place in the conservative movement. Through his platform, his personal network, and the reach of Turning Point USA, he became the bridge between the insurgent new Right and the traditional conservative establishment.
He could elevate new voices into the mainstream or send mainstream ideas back toward the margins – almost at will.
His instinct was always for a big tent, which is why he invited figures like Tucker Carlson onto his stages: better to keep conservatives under one banner than risk splintering the movement. In that sense, he was the fulcrum between two competing Rights.
Now he is a martyr. For years to come, the conservative movement will look to him — and to what he stood for — as a compass. But in the cynical world of politics, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for political maneuvering.
What we are witnessing is a blitzkrieg in the MAGA civil war. With Charlie gone — the rare figure who mediated between factions — Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson are racing to claim him as their own.
They are not interested in confronting the forces that produced his assassin; their focus is on capturing the ground Charlie once held. More than that, they want to claim Charlie as their ally and tell young conservatives, the generation that will shape America’s future, that he would have stood with them.
